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In the near future, I need to supply tablets for two organisations. One for a primary school - 30 shared tablets. The other would be for a business, where we are currently reviewing if we need tablets and what we would use them for as we will have laptops. I think for the business, that there are scenarios where a tablet might be more practical than a laptop.

The school currently have 2013 Ipads which can be no longer be updated and a couple of apps they want to use does not work anymore as it can’t be updated. I have quoted them for 30 Ipads.

However, in the last month, I bought myself a Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 for £169 which I plan to use in the kitchen for recipes, meal planner and food shopping list as I just found it impractical to use my phone or laptop in the kitchen. It’s not the flagship Samsung model by any means. Neither is my 2017 Samsung Galaxy A3 phone which again only gets light use as I don’t play games on it or watch movies etc. I use it for work! While I am not blown away with the speed of loading apps on either device, neither do I feel like - wow this is slow. My phone is now six years old and has lower specs than my new tablet and yet the performance is still very good. In addition, my phone runs all apps that I actually use, despite the fact that Oreo or Android 8 has not been updated for quite a few years.

So it got me thinking - do I really need to consider an Ipad for a primary school (where they don’t use the Ipads that heavily) or for the business that might want to get tablets? Many years ago, when I bought some Samsung tablets for staff at a small school, we found that the tablets were quite slow after only 3 years. I think, if my research is correct that Samsung and other Android manufacturers used much slower type of hard drives back then - the sort you would use in a memory card. However, in recent years, I believe that Android devices have now moved to a different and faster type of drive that is no longer crawling after 3 years of use. My phone certainly is just as fast as it was when I bought it six years ago. My understanding is that Apple for years has used SSD in their Ipads which is why Ipads were so much better than Android a decade ago. In addition, Samsung’s touchwiz UI was crap and buggy and I hated it. But this does not hold true today? The Samsung UI is very enjoyable to use and they seemed to have fixed the sluggish hard drive speeds.

Given that the cheapest Ipad is practically double the price of say the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 and you can use MDM solutions for both IOS and Android nowadays, it got me wondering if Samsung Galaxy Tabs in the A range would be better value for money in small schools or in a business organisation where the use of tablets tends to be more one dedicated task orientated or running only one app at a time.

The only “problem” with Android seems to be that you only get 2 or 3 Android version updates whereas Ipad do seem to get a solid decade of IOS updates. But other than that, I personally prefer Android over IOS. But everywhere I look - schools and businesses - they all tend to use Ipads, but I suspect that may be more because people are reluctant to try Android for business use because everyone knows that Ipads work!

5 Spice ups
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On hardware costs Android will probably win - although check where you are sourcing them as apple give large discounts to education. Make sure it is a main reseller.

Consider the cost of implementation and ongoing support.
First for you - if the current ipads are on an mdm platform, or potentially apple configurator then it will be a simple migration. However if they are not managed currently then the implementation costs should be similar for apple and android. I personally think the apple configurator is superior to anything available for android for building/deploying. IF you are going remote mdm only then you need to look carefully at the mdm platform for feature support - but generally they are equal.

Samsung now offer 5 years support for a hardware devce (android updates and security patches) so it could be considered similar to Apple - or at least not a factor in the replacement - i…e the lifetime of the devices should be considered 5 years for both as even Apple do not actually commit beyond.

Finally what investment does the school have in apple/ios - do they own apps, do they have knowledge of the app etc. So long as the same app is available on Android it is not a consideration, but you need to check android can do everything they intend.

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Do you still use Apple Configurator? I abandoned that some years ago because it was not practical - especially during Covid - to manage Ipads remotely as one has to come on site and login to the Macbook and plug the macbook into the trolley. I went with Mosyle a few years back as they are inexpensive and do everything we need.

Given the cost of Ipad versus Android, the costs of implementation are negligible, especially if we plan to move over to Android completely in the future. I just think Ipads (while very good quality), are a just a bit too expensive for many business scenarios where the tablets don’t necessarily get used as much as a home device is probably used. I would rather bite the bullet and spend a bit more today on implementation if needed.

I believe, and speak under correction, that the 5 year plan for Samsung would be their flagship models or at least in the S range. I was lead to understand that the budget A range may not get 5 years. Apple may not officially more than five years, but their track record seems to suggest they support their Ipads for about 9 years which is very good. However, I am not really that worried about the lifespan of the OS as I have noticed that Android apps seem to be supported for a very long time going back to Android 4 or so. Whatsapp for example still support Android 5 and that was released in 2014! However for Apple, Whatsapp today requires IOS 12 or later. IOS 12 only came out in 2018! So just using Whatsapp, Android does seem to offer a longer lifespan for apps.

The school in question has 99% of the apps free. There are only a couple of paid for apps and they are only installed on a couple of Ipads. So that won’t be a cause for concern.

My only concern is that no businesses that I am aware of seem to use tablets other than Ipads.

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Working in K-12 and we give iPads to our lower grade levels. We did try some Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite devices but they didn’t have the same apps available. The A7s also ended up broken more than the iPads. We used Ensemble for the MDM for the Android devices but it didn’t have a lot of the features that an iOS MDM such as Mosyle or JAMF had.

For the work environment, what phones do those users currently have? If they are all in on iPhone then the iPads would be easier for them to use as they wouldn’t have to learn a new OS.

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Thank you for providing a real life experience of using Samsung. You are quite right to point out that if the teachers all have iphones, they will prefer ipads because they are familiar with it and this is an issue I have seen in schools. However, I think that problem stems from management. Far too often I see equipment being installed and there is apparently never any time to train the staff properly on the system. There seems to be endless time that staff waste trying to muddle their way using something or even worse it just gets dumped in the cupboard and never used again. I will make it clear to the school/business in question the importance of staff training because otherwise it will just get dumped in the cupboard.

I don’t expect the Samsung to offer all the apps that the ipads do. My hope is that there will be similar apps that work on Android. What broke on the Samsung devices? Was it people dropping the tablets or the tablets themselves just stopped working? The tablets in the school I am looking for, will be shared devices so won’t be carried around everywhere and I plan to get proper cases that help to protect the tablets as well, as the number one cause of ipads breaking is when someone drops it onto a hard floor. Although we have had a couple of Ipads just fail outright. But I will give Ipads credit - they are very well made.

It is possible that maybe I need to look at spending a bit more than the Samsung Galaxy tab A9, but not as much as the Ipads. The Ipads I would consider a premium device (and good value at the price they charge - for the build quality you are getting). I would consider the Samsung Tab A range, to be more on the budget side in terms of build quality but certainly better than Amazon Fire tablets which are all but useless as they are so under powered and not really fit for business use.

I will consider something in between the tab A9 and the Ipads as well.

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Using my Samsung Tablet that I bought, I find the performance satisfactory for what I use it for. Admittedly it does not have the build feel of an Ipad. I think I might suggest the Samsung Galaxy A9 plus just to give it a bit more ram and cpu. But I think it would be worthwhile to consider as it’s almost half the price of an Ipad and I just don’t think they need the build quality of the Ipads.

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When choosing tablets for schools and businesses, the decision often leans towards iPads, primarily due to their long history of reliability and the extensive iOS MDM features available through solutions like Mosyle and JAMF. However, it’s worth considering the value that Android tablets, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9, can offer, especially when budget is a significant factor.

I recently tested the Galaxy Tab A9, and while it’s not a flagship model, the performance is solid for daily tasks. For a primary school setting where tablets aren’t used heavily, the cost savings could be substantial without compromising too much on functionality. Plus, with modern MDM solutions like Scalefusion, managing both iOS and Android devices has become more streamlined, ensuring that either choice can be effectively controlled and maintained.

That said, one key consideration is the ecosystem your organization is already invested in. If the staff or students are accustomed to iPhones, the seamless transition to iPads could outweigh the cost savings of Android tablets.

In my experience, while iPads do offer a decade of iOS updates, Android devices have significantly improved in recent years, with faster drives and more user-friendly interfaces. For dedicated tasks or single-app usage, the Galaxy Tab A9 might just be the cost-effective solution you need.

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We ended up going with the Ipads, because Samsung never replied to our pre-sales queries. Which is a shame, as I would have liked to have tried the Samsung Galaxy’s out in a school environment. Glad to hear that you liked the Samsung A9. I use that model for my cooking and recipes and it’s perfect for my needs. I would personally have gone with the A9 + model for the extra ram, storage space etc for a business environment though.